Funeral Homes in Greater Vancouver

While our goal is to provide national coverage of funeral providers across Canada, we also think it's important to provide content specific to some of the largest cities. To this end, we have prepared this guide to help you analyse and ultimately to select a funeral provider in the Greater Vancouver region. By our count, there are 31 funeral providers in the Greater Vancouver region with InMemory (as at June 2018) maintaining listings for 27 Vancouver funeral homes. We don't expect you to review all 27 of them but hopefully the commentary we provide below will help make the task a little more efficient.

We have broken out this guide into 4 different parts:

Refresher on how to use InMemory to find and compare providers in Greater Vancouver.

West Vancouver Funeral Homes

Analysis of funeral prices in Vancouver

Funeral prices in Vancouver range from $437 to $7,290 depending on the type of funeral arrangements selected. To be very clear, we are looking below at the professional fees levied by the funeral provider only; this analysis does not include costs such as cremation fees, flowers, caskets, cemetery plots or opening/closing costs.

Average prices and the price range for the four main types of funerals based on the 27 funeral homes in Greater Vancouver are provided below for your consideration.

Traditional Funeral

Avg $4,981

Min $2,965

Max $7,290

Graveside Service

Avg $3,525

Min $1,435

Max $6,665

Memorial Service

Avg $3,757

Min $1,799

Max $6,270

Direct Cremation

Avg $1,637

Min $437

Max $3,525

Further detail on additional costs and cash disbursements (over and above the funeral provider's professional fees summarized above) is available on our InMemory resource page - How much is it going to cost? We are also pleased to provide further information on financial assistance should it be required.

Other information

Corporate versus family owned

Few people outside the funeral industry are aware that one large multinational corporate (Service Corporate International - "SCI") and another large national chain (Arbor Memorial - "Arbor") together hold substantial market share across Canada - and, in particular, in the larger cities.

Of the 27 providers with listings in Greater Vancouver, SCI owns 10 and Arbor owns 3. See the summary list below. It's interesting that both companies have elected to keep their funeral homes operating under independent names than their corporate brand.

Service Chain International (operating under "Dignity" brand)

First Memorial Funeral Services - Fraser Highway

First Memorial Funeral Services - North Vancouver

First Memorial Funeral Services - Kingsway

First Memorial Funeral Services - Port Coquitlam

Forest Lawn Funeral Home

Hamilton Harron Funeral Home - Fraser Street

Hollyburn Funeral Home

Mount Pleasant Universal Funeral Home

Vancouver Memorial Services and Crematorium

Victory Memorial Park Funeral Centre

Arbor Memorial

Avalon Surrey Funeral Home & Cremation Centre

Delta Funeral Home and Cremation Service

Valley View Funeral Home & Cemetery

Choosing between a national / multinational corporate chain versus family owned homes is a question that individuals need to answer for themselves. Corporate chains have the advantage of scale which will drive their costs down; from our analysis however, they do not pass on these savings to the consumer. At the same time, we do not see corporate chains on the absolute high end of pricing either. One advantage of a corporate chain is that they will have stronger internal governance / training which should lead to a more consistent, quality experience.

On the other hand, smaller family owned chains may be more variable in the service they provide, but are more connected to their respective communities and have the ability to be more flexible on the services they can offer (as they won't be governed by a corporate policy manual).

It's important to stress though, that there is no right or wrong in what direction you want to take!

We would like to thank you for your use of InMemory.ca and as it grows from its launch in June 2018, we will be pleased to offer additional information such as InMemory Confidence Badges and customer reviews to assist your decision making. We trust this information is useful for you and encourage you to submit a quote request or contact request to your funeral home of choice and then please leave a review of your selected funeral home afterwards to assist others in this time of need.